South Carolina child welfare workers would be required to turn over a child’s full medical history to their new foster or adoptive parents under legislation headed to the South Carolina Senate.

The House unanimously passed the measure on Thursday, which would also require the agency include assault or neglect in a kid’s past. State Rep. Joshua Putnam said it would allow foster parents to better care for the child.

“You’re bringing children into another home, another family with other children,” he told South Carolina Radio Network. “Then you need to know the information to get the best treatment for that child.”

The bill, if also approved by the Senate and Gov. Henry McMaster, would require DSS disclose any information it has to foster family, adoptive parents or extended family where a child is placed into custody that is “necessary to provide adequate care and supervision for the child” and to protect the health and safety of the child or the family. The same would also apply for any group home or child placement agency.

Appleseed Legal Justice Center director Sue Berkowitz said DSS caseworkers are often hesitant to provide information without a specific state law saying they can do so. She said that creates problems for families who take in a child abused in the past.

“How do you deal with the behavioral health and trauma of a child if you don’t have the full history?” she said.

The House also gave its approval last week to another bill that would ease the requirements for relatives to become licensed “kinship” foster parents. The measure would apply if DSS places a child with extended family either because the parents lose custody or die. Putnam said the worsening opioid overdose crisis has thrust many families unexpectedly into the role with little guidance from the state on their options for financial assistance or counseling.

Under the bill, DSS could also waive some of its normal licensing requirements for those families on a case-by-case basis. The agency could not waive background checks.

“Right now, we treat these kids as a piece of property. And that’s not right,” Putnam said. “Making these reforms, providing these resources and allowing these kids to feel like they’re part of a family is going to go a long way towards helping these kids heal.”

The measure will arrive in the Senate on Tuesday, where it will likely be referred to committee.

South Carolina secretary of state Mark Hammond doesn’t have a lot of responsibilities …

His office is basically a glorified file cabinet, responsible for receiving and storing paperwork on South Carolina-based businesses. Seriously: A moderately well-trained monkey could perform the office’s functions – and probably perform them better than Hammond.

This news site has long argued that the secretary of state’s office should be reconfigured as a cabinet agency with authority over the state’s elections – with the secretary becoming the state’s chief election officer.

We’ve also argued (in keeping with this cabinet designation) that the secretary should become an appointee of the governor. There’s simply no reason to continue independently electing this office, particularly in its current iteration.

Of course filing business paperwork isn’t the only function of the secretary of state … something South Carolinians are finding out the hard way this week.

Why is this a big deal? Because Article III, Section 18 of South Carolina’s constitution (.pdf) states that no act or joint resolution of the state’s legislative branch shall have the “force of law” unless it has “had the Great Seal of the State affixed to it.”

Translation? No seal = no law.

Hammond is not disputing his office’s failure to affix the “Great Seal” on potentially hundreds of acts and resolutions. He is, however, attempting to blame the fiasco on the lawmaker who brought it to the public’s attention – state representative Joshua Putnam. To hear Hammond tell it, Putnam (below) is politicizing the scandal because he is currently campaigning for the office Hammond has held for the past fifteen years.

(Via: Joshua Putnam)

That may very well be true … but Hammond’s transparent attempt to deflect his clear culpability in this matter is laughable. In fact, his effort to shift the blame for what we previously referred to as “the mother of all governmental boners” is only providing voters with additional evidence of his unfitness for office.

In addition to failing to affix the seal to hundreds of acts and resolutions, Hammond has also failed to turn over these acts and resolutions to the S.C. Department of Archives and History (SCDAH) as required by state law. Originally, he was supposed to turn these documents over to SCDAH after a five-year period, but the law has since been changed to require a two-year window.

We wonder … were those laws he declined to stamp?

Hammond’s failure to comply with his statutory authority has exacerbated the constitutional confusion associated with #SealMageddon – leaving the public to wonder which laws passed over the past decade-and-a-half received the “Great Seal” and which ones didn’t. His office has also apparently applied the seal to a number of laws retroactively, although we don’t know which ones – and we don’t know when this retroactive application took place.

It’s a massive cluster, in other words …

We have no idea yet how this scandal is going to unfold. We’re currently awaiting an attorney general’s opinion as to the constitutional viability of the impacted bills, and after that we suspect the S.C. Supreme Court will be called upon to weigh in on the matter.

We know this, though: However #SealMageddon is ultimately resolved from a legal perspective, its ultimate resolution must include either the resignation or removal of Mark Hammond from office.

We have nothing against Hammond on a personal level, but the facts of this case are unavoidable. He has failed spectacularly to discharge his duty as an elected official – a failure that could conceivably overturn a decade’s worth of state laws. And once again, upon being confronted by this galling ineptitude, Hammond’s only response was that a campaign opponent was seeking to use his gross incompetence as a “political football.”

Unbelievable …

Hammond should do the honorable thing and step down from his $92,000 a year job – immediately. Absent that, state lawmakers should begin impeachment proceedings against him at the earliest possible date.

Nov. 17, 2017, at 4:47 p.m.

By MEG KINNARD, Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The lack of an official seal on more than a hundred South Carolinalaws is unlikely to upend years of legislation, according to a longtime judge now serving as a legislator, but that doesn’t mean legal challenges won’t start stacking up in the overburdened court system.

According to the state constitution, “No bill or joint resolution shall have the force of law until it … has had the Great Seal of the State affixed to it, and has been signed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.”

The legislative documents recording more than a dozen laws reviewed by The Associated Press on Friday lack this embossed symbol, and without it, one longtime jurist says, these laws are open to legal challenges by defendants seeking any avenue to toss their cases.

“Under this scenario, anyone can file any kind of a lawsuit seeking to challenge the validity of a law,” state Rep. Gary Clary, a former circuit court judge, told the AP on Friday.

Clary said he doesn’t think the state Supreme Court would overturn the potentially hundreds of bills that lack the seal, but the clamor to file suit anyway could clog the courts.

“It doesn’t mean that they won’t try,” he said.

Clary spoke a day after Rep. Joshua Putnam told AP he had discovered the seal hadn’t been affixed to some bills. State law doesn’t specifically delegate that duty to the secretary of state, although that office has traditionally performed the task, and legislators assumed it was continuing to do so.

Putnam, who is challenging Secretary of State Mark Hammond in next year’s GOP primary, said he made the discovery while researching ways the secretary’s office could be more efficient and better use technology. He has submitted an open-records request, seeking to discover how extensive the problem may be.

Hammond told AP on Friday that he learned in August, after the last legislative session, that the seal had been “inconsistently” applied and that he was fixing the problem. Attributing the failure to human error, Hammond said he will personally ensure new bills have the seal.

But Hammond, a Republican in office since 2003, said he expects hearings on the matter.

“We will have to wait and see and see what type of actions are filed,” he said, adding that legal challenges are “certainly a possibility.”

Putnam said he plans to ask Attorney General Alan Wilson for a legal opinion. Clary said he expects lawmakers will debate after they reconvene in January before settling on clarifying instructions on how the application of the seal should be handled.

If this eventually reaches the state Supreme Court, Clary hopes justices will rule that the absence of the seal doesn’t nullify years’ worth of legislation, sending lawmakers back to square one on hundreds of bills.

That, he said, “would be an extremely chaotic situation that no one would want to go through.”

___

Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP. Read more of her work at https://apnews.com/search/meg%20kinnard.

An Upstate S.C. lawmaker hopes to unseat an incumbent statewide elected official in his own party.

Joshua Putnam, R-Anderson, says he will run for secretary of state in the June 2018 GOP primary, after eight years in the S.C. House.

To get the job, Putnam, 28, will have to unseat Mark Hammond, R-Spartanburg, now in his fourth term.

Putnam said he “will bring a fresh set of eyes and a new business-friendly approach to a government office that has not changed hands in 16 years.”

The secretary of state manages business filings in South Carolina and charities.

In announcing his candidacy at the State House last week, Putnam said he wants to bring “more accessibility and transparency to the office of secretary of state, making it more efficient and user-friendly for South Carolina businesses in the 21st century.”

In the House, Putnam, a landscape supervisor in Piedmont, sponsored the Tucker Hipps Transparency Act, which requires colleges to report on their websites alcohol, drug, hazing, and sexual or physical assault violations by fraternities.

Putnam is a Republican from Piedmont who has served in the South Carolina House of Representatives since 2011

State Rep. Joshua Putnam is planning to run next year for South Carolina secretary of state.

Putnam said Tuesday that he plans to formally announce his candidacy next week.The 28-year-old Republican from Piedmont has served in the state House of Representatives since 2011.

“This is something that we have been considering for the past two years,” Putnam said.

Mark Hammond, 53, who was elected as South Carolina’s 41st secretary of state in 2002, said Tuesday that he plans to seek a fifth term. He and Putnam will meet in the June 2018 GOP primary.

The secretary of state’s office handles an array of business filings. It also oversees charities and raffles in South Carolina.

Putnam said he believes that “the time has come for new leadership” in the office.

“Even the best people can get stagnant,” he said. “I think the secretary of state is an underutilized office with a great amount of potential.”

If elected, he said he would serve as an advocate for the state’s business community and also work to increase the visibility of the secretary of state’s office.

“I want everyone in the state to know how the office can serve them,” he said.

Hammond said he runs “one of the best secretary of state’s offices in the nation” that plays a key role in promoting economic development in South Carolina.

“We are business friendly and customer friendly,” he said.

Hammond said his office has received national attention for cracking down on “sham charities.”

“I have never viewed this office as a stepping stone,” Hammond said.

After earning a master’s degree in education from Clemson University in 1988, Hammond worked as a criminal investigator for the 7th Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office. He was elected as Spartanburg County’s clerk of courts in 1996.

As secretary of state, Hammond has not faced a primary challenger since 2006. He received about 60 percent of the votes against Democratic opponents in 2006, 2010 and 2014.

Putnam became the youngest member of the South Carolina General Assembly when he won a special election for the House District 10 seat in 2011 after the resignation of former state Rep. Dan Cooper. Putnam defeated Hamp Johnson in a 2012 GOP primary and ran unopposed in 2014. He received 81 percent of the votes in defeating Democrat Anna Brown last year.

Since taking office, Putnam has won passage of bills to improve the state’s foster-care system, increase access to Epipen medications that are used to treat life-threatening allergic reactions and require South Carolina’s public universities to publicly report hazing-related incidents.

Putnam, a North Greenville University graduate who works as a landscape supervisor, would see a significant salary increase if he becomes secretary of state. As a House member, he is paid $10,400 annually with $12,000 for district-related expenses. Hammond currently earns a yearly salary of $92,000.

Our First 3 Objectives

Technology & Cyber Security: Technology & Cyber Security must be at the forefront of very decision made in the Secretary of State’s office. Just about every day we hear of another cyber ransom or technology related crime, and it’s only going to get worse. These crimes end up costing consumers and tax payers billions of

We see all the announcements of mega-corporations relocating to South Carolina, but we rarely hear of any advancement within our small business community. “Why is this?” you may ask. Well it’s because for far too long SC has overlooked our most important economic producers within the state. Regulation and tax reform have been nonexistent for

You probably didn’t know this, but you have no accountability as a citizen over our election process within this state. Those who run and are entrusted with protecting the integrity of our election process are un-elected bureaucrats. When something goes horribly wrong within our elections you do not get the opportunity at the ballot box